Words to Tie to Bricks Read online

  I wonder if you know just how angry I was.

  But I’m doing well. I keep on telling myself I’m doing well. The pain is still there but I’m learning to live with it without hurting too much, and I can manage almost a day without thinking of you. I met a nice guy at the meeting in the town hall, Michael he was called, and he invited me out for coffee and gave me flowers. He’s been round a few times, and the kids like him. Max climbed all over him and Becky sat on his knee and looked up at him with round, shy eyes. He tried to kiss me once, I turned my face away so he got my cheek. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since and maybe next time I’ll let him.

  Shouldn’t you be the first one to speak? I don’t know what it is you’re here to say.

  You touch my face. Your hand is familiar to me. And it’s so much better than fantasies or tear-soaked sheets or nights filled with silence.

  ‘It’s time to let me go,’ you whisper. I shake my head.

  ‘Yes it is. It’s time,’ you insist, your voice soft. ‘You’ve been holding on to me and I’ve been holding onto you. But we’re both ready. It’s time.’

  ‘You promised you’d never leave me,’ I choke out. I think I’m crying.

  ‘You know I had no choice,’ you remind me gently. How have I managed for so long without you to remind me of things? ‘You know it was my time to die. Come on now. You’re ready. You can do it. You can let me go.’

  I cry. And finally I nod. You lean forward and kiss my mouth. I close my eyes. When I open them there’s nothing but the sunset and my fingers stroking thin air.

  A Gentleman’s Guide To Playing With Your Food

  ANNA MULLIGAN

  Don’t break her; bend her.

  Twist her mind back like a finger

  And when she begins to drain of colour

  Take away her light – slowly,

  Like cutting hair – in increments,

  Just a little at a time, so one day

  She will look in the mirror

  And not know herself

  Without you.

  Don’t let her snap – be careful.

  Tears are sloppy; keep it to broken sleep.

  Limit your effects to restlessness

  And self-doubt. Let her see things;

  She will lie to herself

  For you.

  Don’t let her starve – feed her

  With controlled portions of affection,

  Little things:

  Careless gestures, hands on hands,

  Meaningless glances.

  She will use them

  To forgive you.

  You must never let her see more

  Than she can deny to herself

  When she tosses

  In the night.

  Flight

  SAMUEL H. DOYLE

  One door remained

  To be breached.

  I lunged for it

  The lock shattering

  into diamonds and prisms

  of enchanting rainbows,

  a spectrum unchecked.

  I stepped through.

  A fantastic gravity pulling

  My leaden legs

  To the edge.

  Some deadly desire forcing my footsteps.

  I hung above a crystal precipice,

  Crevasses promised

  A blissful fall.

  I dived off.

  My arms opened

  Wide like a boiling ocean

  Of emeralds and sapphires.

  I plunged deeper

  Through swirling fogs

  Of lavender

  Shrouding the treacherous lows.

  I unfurled my wings

  And flew.

  A Broken Us

  AMY CAMPBELL

  IT IS THREE O’CLOCK IN the morning when I get the call. I pick up on the third ring, like I always do, although we both know I was waiting by the phone. ‘Where are you?’ I ask; no need for pleasantries. You and I have danced to this music for so long now that I move on autopilot, stepping in time to a song that only we can hear.

  ‘Outside,’ you choke, and although I register the tears in your voice, I don’t question them, because I lost my curiosity a long time ago.

  I open the door, even though I don’t want to, and you fall into the dimly lit hallway that used to be called ours. As soon as I flick the switch on the lamp, I regret it; the light lifts the shadows from your face and illuminates bruises, scars and tears that I don’t want to see.

  There is a fresh cut on your temple, and if you notice the blood running down your cheek, you don’t show it. You drop the empty bottle to the ground, and I flinch as it shatters on the wooden floor. I busy myself cleaning the wound on your head and sweeping away the shards of broken glass because it is easier than looking into your empty eyes.

  I lead you to the bedroom, as has become routine. You never comment on the blanket that has taken up permanent residence on the armchair and the untouched sheets in our bedroom, never ask why I leave a perfectly good double bed empty every night you’re not here. Maybe you know that it is too painful for me to sleep in our space without you. Maybe you just don’t notice. You slide between the sheets of the bed that used to be ours but isn’t even mine anymore, like nothing has changed.

  I don’t know how you do it. You act as if the last year never happened and although I wish more than anything that it hadn’t, I can’t. I can’t wake up here with you and find it had been nothing more than a bad dream like you always used to complain of. So I don’t speak. Neither do you.

  You pull me in like you do every time and although I resist at first, we both know where this is heading. We fall onto our usual sides of the bed, me in a pencil skirt, blouse and blazer from work, you in old jeans, a torn t-shirt and a familiar leather jacket that smells like cigarette smoke and alcohol and your cologne. It is so painfully similar, yet nothing is the same. I know that in the morning I will watch you sneaking out, gathering your clothes from the floor and trying not to wake me. I will pretend to sleep. It’s just easier that way.

  When I go downstairs I will be able to smell the coffee and see the cup in the sink. You will have taken two of the aspirin that I have started to leave out for you, like a child laying out cookies and milk for Santa Claus. And come night time, you will greet me again with a phone call or a knock on the door and I will get you, wherever you are, and allow you to fall into my arms and pull me into what was once our sanctuary. It might not be tomorrow; I’m never quite sure when it will be. Do you know that I don’t go out anymore for fear you’ll call and I’ll miss it?

  I sit in my chair although yours is bigger, watching the phone, willing it to ring and wishing that it wouldn’t. I fall asleep there on the nights that you don’t call. It’s the same old game as always, me taking care of you. I was happy like that; I could have done it forever. You were the one who walked away. You were gone with nothing more than a brief ‘it’s not working’, a rough apology and a pre-packed suitcase.

  I knew the first time you slammed the door that you would be back. And I knew the first time the phone rang at three a.m. that you would never fully leave. You would reach for me night after night, and I would reach back, driving to wherever you were two or three times a week, if that was what you needed. Because you never stopped needing me, the same way I never stopped loving you.

  When I wake up to the familiar empty bed, I do not feel anything. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, because you can’t stop coming back to a broken us any more than I can stop welcoming a broken you back into a defeated embrace.

  Deep

  CAELEN FELLER

  Out of sight,

  Out of comfort,

  Bobbing in the sea.

  The waves here are gentle,

  But their nature is to engulf.

  This water is deep,

  Enriched by the lives of all creation,

  Their history runs in every current.

  Yet none have dived deep enough

&nb
sp; To see this ocean’s floor.

  Sinking here is easy.

  There are many currents,

  Unseen, that clutch at me.

  They pull me down, deeper.

  Others float and sink.

  Caught up in these waves,

  They never think to struggle.

  Yet simply are pulled along,

  And eventually,

  The water will drag them down.

  When I dive,

  And the currents take me,

  I see such depths.

  Before the breath I took

  To sustain me runs out,

  I see another world.

  The blood of all history runs here,

  Diluted in the water.

  I swim through it all,

  And still continue.

  But when the air runs out

  And water takes its place,

  I always float back to the surface.

  Bobbing in the water again.

  Home

  SEAN CERONI

  There is nothing more sinister

  Than a comfortable prison.

  Yellow

  GRACE COLLINS

  YELLOW IS HOW A YOUNG boy feels on his first day, in a new place where dreams come true. It’s that hopeful giddiness that forces its way into your brain, taking up all your thoughts. It can be comforting, like when you run a bath at the perfect temperature and you lower yourself into it and allow your mind to wander over people you say you don’t care for but deep down they mean the most to you.

  It’s not awkward small talk and pretending that you weren’t just staring at a certain someone. It’s easy conversation and hearing lovely people laugh at things that aren’t that funny. It’s your first kiss that you then ran away from and have been embarrassed about ever since. It’s the fragile, flirty, nervous, silly relationship you have with someone before you label it and crush what the two of you once shared.

  It’s knowing that there is someone who for some strange reason still cares for you and is worried about you and realises that there is something wrong although you won’t admit it, not even to yourself. It’s being cared about. It’s seeing that after all you have done you still have someone there.

  It’s getting a hug that’s warm and smells good and lasts just a little bit too long. And finding that perfect place for your hands around someone’s neck when they hold you. It’s horrible dancing to really bad music but not caring who’s watching. And it’s doing cartwheels in the rain just because you can.

  It’s getting a letter you never expected, with that same old messy scrawl that labels the front of a book as being important to you because a wonderful person took time to write it for you. It’s saying goodbye to a place where you have had so many good memories, not because you have to, but because you have finally come to peace with saying goodbye. It’s seeing that everything that you’ve ever wanted wasn’t actually for you and you were only working towards it and saying it because it fits the mould of what people want for you.

  Yellow is having conversations planned in your head only to have the other participant not follow the script in the best way possible. Yellow is giving the perfect gift to someone on their birthday. And knowing that somewhere, you’re crossing someone’s mind right now.

  Yellow is rereading your favourite parts of books and taking the last sip of tea from a cup: savouring its taste and letting it warm you from the inside out. It’s listening to an album from start to finish and not realising that there’s no more music flooding your ears. It’s waking up in the middle of the night and watching the moon, wondering who else is up.

  It can be sad, it can be going for a walk in the dark and then calling a friend from a random phone booth to ask them to come pick you up, only to cry when they get there. It can be fake and phony and putting up a brave front. And sometimes you need that front because it’ll help you to know what the dream is like and it makes you want it more.

  Someone’s going to find the crack, so be careful. But cracks are made to be picked at. For someone to come along and uncover your greatness. To pick you up, cuddle you close and tell you it’s gonna be okay. That’s yellow too.

  My End

  EMMA SHEVLIN

  When I leave

  I want to take the words that fueled my soul.

  The friendship.

  The romance.

  The love.

  The fiction.

  When I leave

  I want to hear the melodies that brought me through.

  Ecstatic music.

  Heartbreak music.

  Poignant music.

  Our music.

  When I leave

  I want to be crowded by those who helped me along.

  My family.

  My friends.

  My enemies.

  My people.

  When I leave

  I want to have mountains of memories I have built up in my time.

  Recite them.

  Share them.

  Document them.

  Remember them.

  When I leave

  Don’t ever stop feeling.

  Continue to fear.

  Continue to conquer.

  Continue to love.

  Continue to live.

  My ending should not prompt yours.

  An Introduction To Me

  AMY CAMPBELL

  NOBODY IS PERFECT, BUT we will all die trying. I am not perfect, and am able to accept the fact that I never will be. Perfection has never been something I strived for. Perfect people aren’t real, they aren’t interesting. And I like to believe that my flaws are what make me who I am.

  I may not be the prettiest girl you know. My eyes are too far apart, my nose is too wide, my hair goes fuzzy in the rain. I may not be the smartest girl that you know. I am proud to bring home a report card with mainly B’s, I don’t know the surface area of the earth, I never quite understood long division. I may not be the nicest girl that you know. I say things without thinking, don’t say thank you often enough, forget the manners my parents spent fifteen years teaching me. I may not be the strongest girl that you know, or the most popular, or the best at drawing, dancing or science. I will never be a professional footballer, or any footballer for that matter. I can’t describe myself in adjectives, lay out my personality in words and definitions from the dictionary. Because I am none of them. And at the same time, I am all of them.

  I have always used words to express my feelings. I text my friends about my day, share my thoughts on Facebook, jot down my life into the journals I keep. I write songs and stories and poems to describe the feelings I couldn’t possibly explain. And yet I cannot describe myself using only words. I can only tell you what I am not. Perfect. What am I? Everything else.

  I can be loud, I can sing and yell and make crazy noises until my voice is hoarse. And yet at the same time, I can savour the hours alone when I am lost within myself, in a dreamland that only I have ever been to. I can be happy, I can run around the school singing and laughing and proclaiming that we live in a wonderful world. And I can have days when my eyes are red, and I choke on my words and I want nothing more than to be hugged and told that everything will be all right. I am ambitious and driven and enthusiastic, but some days my answer to every question is, ‘because I can’t be bothered.’

  I laugh with people, I laugh at people. I talk to people, I talk about people. I dream of the life I would live if I won the Lotto, the things I would say if I was brave enough, the celebrities I fall in love with. I dream about the perfect world, where there is no war or poverty or death. I am just like any normal teenager. There’s nothing special or extraordinary about me, nothing that sets me apart from all the rest. I am just me. And I cannot be described in four paragraphs. I’ve known me for sixteen years and I still surprise myself every day.

  So if you want words to describe me, try all of them. Because that’s what I try to be. Everything. I want to be friendly and funny and creative and talented and sm
art and pretty and loyal. I want to change the world some day, even just a little bit. I want to be the best that I can be at everything I do. But I’ll settle for being me. Because in the end, that’s all I can be.

  Silence

  ORLA MCGOVERN

  Silence condenses, squeezes,

  Makes the profound more profound.

  Its pressure creates complex

  Paintings of the simplest sounds.

  The silence after a song

  Is when the emotion hits,

  As everyone hurts and feels and cries

  While the silence bends and shifts.

  It brings couples close ... closer

  And crashes them to an end.

  Silence is sad, solemn and lonely

  But the lonely make good friends.

  Made of Glass

  CAELEN FELLER

  It’s said that hearts are made of glass,

  That glass will shatter in the end.

  That someone will make a crack.

  And this crack will creep along,

  Until the seal on a heart is broken,

  Ruby droplets gathering along its length.

  But glass can be collected,

  Melted down, formed again,

  We can always have a new beginning.

  Broken glass is a dangerous thing,

  Slitting our hands as we mend it.

  Opening old wounds to bleed again.

  But with you,

  I can just sweep the glass away

  And forget.

  I don’t need my broken heart,

  When I have yours.

  I Did It

  ANDREW DUFFY

  I DID IT. THE ROOM filled with the stares of pure disgust and, in some cases, sheer savage animalistic rage. All I could say was ‘what?’ They cried, they screamed the whole house into Hades and blew the neighbourhood to the outer reaches of the galaxy. All I could do was laugh at their whining, their misery at the smallest of things. An action that in the grand scheme of the universe means absolutely nothing. A decision on a speck of dust on the third rock from the sun in the only solar system known to possess life.